MAULDIN — Mauldin has stopped all construction for 120 days in a 24-acre area near City Hall as planners sort out how to transform the area into Greenville County's newest walkable downtown.

Mauldin City Council members voted on the measure — which places a moratorium on all building permits in the zone — Monday night at a meeting attended by several of the dozen or so men and women who own property there.

The city's goal, dating back more than a decade, is to take an area dominated by City Hall, small businesses fronting Main Street and a 3.5-acre storage unit facility and turn it into a mixed-use village, complete with a village green.

Mauldin has no traditional downtown like Greenville, Greer or Fountain Inn, so most of the structures for the village concept, as shown in city renderings, would be new. The concept is generally popular among business owners and residents who have attended recent council meetings.

Distinctive Details owner Nick Netschaeff said Mauldin has always been a car town, its landscape dotted with car and tire dealerships.

"When I was in high school in the late '70s, if you wanted a used car, you came to Mauldin," Netschaeff said. "There were so many used cars in Mauldin."

Mauldin's economic development director, Van Broad, agreed that cars have been the life blood of the community for years.

"We don't want to take that for granted," Broad said. "At the same time, the world is changing. Folks who grew up with that, now they have gone to urban centers with restaurants and walk-able communities. Some have come back and said, 'When's Mauldin going to do that?'"

The city has not announced who the developer or developers are for the downtown project or how they might be chosen in the future.

For whoever the developer ends up being, Mauldin leaders point at several attractions to private investment: the acreage's location at one of the busiest intersections in the Upstate, planned zoning controls that would encourage high-end development, and Mauldin as a public partner with funds dedicated to infrastructure.

Broad said the mood was positive Monday as the moratorium passed.

"There was some preliminary discussion about whether it should be 120 days," Broad said, "but it passed as is."

The city's next step, Broad said, will be to draft and vote on a new mixed-use zoning classification for the area.

The moratorium itself only affects properties whose owners have plans for major changes to their buildings. Naren Hegneshwar, owner of the Thumbs Up Coin Laundry at 210 N. Main St., said it does not bother him, for instance. His concerns lie in what is ahead.

"I have to wait and watch for the development plan and the appointment of the developer with whom I will have to deal with," Hegneshwar said in a text.

The moratorium's passage was a foregone conclusion, said Greenville attorney Rivers Stilwell, but he added that he does not understand how the city will find a developer based on promises of infrastructure funds that do not yet exist. Under an inter-governmental agreement with Greenville County, the city will be able to dedicate fees collected on new development downtown to infrastructure in the area.

"It's a chicken-egg argument," Stilwell said. "The infrastructure they are talking about is all dependent on new development. How do you get from A to Z with no city money?"

The client Stilwell represents, a Charlotte developer who wanted to add a Dollar Tree to the mix of retailers along Mauldin's Main Street, could not be reached for comment, but Stilwell said he has spent thousands of dollars on design and engineering. A Chinese restaurant now stands where Stilwell's client wanted to build a Dollar Tree, and the building moratorium prevents him from doing anything with the old building for four months.

Broad has said he met with Stilwell's client and explained the city wants higher-end development in that area.

"That's like them telling us, 'We know you want a Chevy but go ahead and get a Cadillac,'" Stilwell said.

City officials have declined to comment on how they might attract a developer or buy additional land. County records show that the city of Mauldin owns about 40 percent of the roughly 24-acre area in the proposed redevelopment district. A collection of 13 property owners hold the remaining 15 parcels.